What did Charles Ponzi do - and is money flipping the dumbest scheme yet?

Ever heard of money flipping? It’s a new scheme doing the rounds on Facebook and social media that promises to turn your £50 into potentially thousands.

So how do you do that? Simple really, you pay others to get onto the bottom rung of a pyramid and then recruit more people to move you up a level and get paid yourself.

What makes it so dumb is that it doesn’t even try to have the legitimate veneer of famous pyramid schemes of the past. It’s a Ponzi scheme, plain and simple, but what is one of those and who was Charles Ponzi, the man the scams are named after.

On this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost step back to America in 1920 to find out how Ponzi soared and then crashed – and look at the new money flipping scheme that has brought a trick as old as time to today’s digital age.

Also on this week’s podcast, we look at TSB customers who are unfortunate enough to get scammed themselves after the bank’s meltdown and how it is failing them.

And we take a look at whether the FTSE 100’s sudden 14% rise on its way to new record highs can still mean it is an unloved investment – and find out where pension millionaires invest.

Enjoy.